Thanksgiving marks the beginning for many of a busy holiday season filled with visiting family, kids home from school, shopping and errands to run, and delicious meals. Busy days entertaining, traveling, or preparing can put pressure on your training time, and the changing weather doesn’t always help either. Your training plan is important, but during the often stressful holiday season remember that adapting, changing, rescheduling that plan is ok. A missed workout won’t affect your performance six months from now (though missing a week might), and shortening a workout is always better than canceling it completely. Here are a couple of tips to keep in mind during the festive times: Involve your family, friends, and guests: It’s easier to stick to your routine if you can involve others. Find a hike to make a group outing to, and make a day of it. Your guests get to have a nice adventure, stretch their legs, and get a few photos. You get some endurance base training in. If you have to slow the pace a bit, it’s ok; you’re still getting the miles in and improving your endurance base. You can increase your workload by offering to carry the group’s water bottles, jackets, cameras, and other odds and ends. Use the mornings: Vacations often mean sleeping in, dawdling over a cup of coffee and breakfast, and enjoying time off. Try waking up 45 minutes earlier than you would and getting out the door for a run, hike, bike, or strength session. If you go to bed with a plan for the morning, it’s easy to get your workout done before anybody else has even gotten out of bed! Have a few quick go-to workouts: Some days get busy, and the workout you may have planned just doesn’t fit. Having a few 30 – 45-minute workouts in reserve can be the difference between skipping your training entirely, and getting out the door. A couple of ideas are:

a yoga session

a core strength session

short intense intervals (6 x 1minute)

a 30-minute tempo run

or an easy 45-minute recovery run before the big meal

Remember to enjoy it: We head to the mountains because they bring us enjoyment, we spend time with family and friends because it brings enjoyment, and hopefully our training brings a measure of enjoyment as well. If your training regime becomes a chore that you feel like you have to get done, but dread doing, switch things up and spend a couple of days doing activities because you enjoy them rather than for their training benefits. When you find enjoyment in your training, you’ll train harder and more effectively, and it will be easier to get out the door. Similarly, don’t let the stress of fitting in training take away from enjoying the time you spend with friends and family. It is that time of the season after all! _____ Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!